by Judith Tarr
It was ill news, all things considered. She frowned as she pondered it. So did everybody else. It was remarkably quiet in the kitchen after the house-servant left. Amid the scents of bread baking, meat roasting, sweet cakes cooling by the hearth, no one spoke more than he must, or lifted his eyes from his work.
She did what needed doing. She plucked fowl, ground spices, kneaded bread. She had forgotten the aches in her body, and what they meant, too. There would be no festival for her now, no celebration of her newborn womanhood. She was a slave again, and of no consequence.
It did not matter. When she closed her eyes, she saw moon-colored horses. When she opened them, the world was a dim and shadowy thing, and the people in it frail and without substance, like souls that had not quite found their way to the land of the dead.
When at last all was ready, when the feast was laid and the Retenu brought in to it, Iry’s place was in the procession of maids with the wine. They all wore garlands about brow and waist, and their long hair free, and no other garment or ornament.
Iry, the last and tallest, was to wait on the lord as she always had. That was Teti’s own order, relayed by his daughter Nefer-Maat, with much giggling and silliness as she did it. “Father says to put on your best manners, and be charming if you can. This lord’s softer than the other was. He might be kindly disposed toward you.”
“I know the kindness of the Retenu,” Iry muttered. “I neither want nor need it.”
Nefer-Maat did not hear, or else she did not understand. Iry was glad enough of that. Teti was trying to do well by her, in his way. She could hardly fault him for that.
She took her place at the end of the procession, cradling the tall pitcher of copper inlaid with gold, and hoping her garlands would stay in place and not slip down to her eyes or her knees. She had no illusion of beauty, except what every Egyptian woman had: long dark eyes, fine-boned face, slender long-limbed body. Her breasts were small and her hips little broader than a boy’s— though that would change, Tawit had assured her, now she was a woman.
That was its own inconvenience. The twist of wool that she had been given felt odd, uncomfortable in its secret place. If it failed, she would be worse than ashamed. Retenu were peculiar about women’s matters. They had some notion that a woman in her courses was unclean, and should be kept apart from men. Which Teti should know—and if he did know it, and if his wife and daughters had told him of Iry’s condition, then he played a deeper game than she would have thought him capable of.
No. Teti did not know, or was not thinking. Iry could defy him, but she was minded to do as he bade her. She wanted to see this new lord. To know what sort of man traveled with so many horses, and such horses, at that.
They waited a long time to be given the signal, but that was as it always was. The passage in which they waited was close and ill-lit and suffocatingly warm. Iry leaned against the wall and hoped the dizziness would pass. Her eyes must be clear and her mind unclouded when she entered the hall. This was her enemy, her new lord and master. If she was to know him, she must have wits enough to study him.
The other maids chattered incessantly, oblivious to her silence. They had all been slaves or servants before Iry’s father died. Iry had little to say to them, or they to her.
They could hear the sounds of revelry beyond the wall, louder when the door opened for servitors to come and go. Retenu believed in making a great noise when they feasted—for luck, they said, and to honor the giver of the feast. Not that they would see Teti as any such. He was a servant, that was all, a mere Egyptian. Any honor they gave, they gave to the new lord of the house.
It was time. The babble of voices swelled and faded. Iry heard the rattle of the sistrum and the beating of the drum, the signal for the wine to come in. She straightened her wilting garlands and her wilted self, and raised the heavy pitcher to its proper and elegant angle.
She never did this for the foreign lord. She did it for herself and for her family. That was older than these outlanders could ever imagine. And in all that time, it had never, not once, bowed its head to a lord who was not Egyptian.
She could keep her pride, whatever else she lost. That straightened her back and squared her shoulders. She walked into the hall that she knew so well, with its painted frescoes of lords and ladies feasting and dancing. Burly bearded men sat at the tables now. The scent of flowers struggled against the pungency of sweat, the lingering odors of roasted meats, spiced sauces, beer and barley bread.
Some of them at least had had the sense to put on kilts—far better in the heat than wool and leather. They were not beautiful to see, not in the slightest. Even their shoulders and backs were black with hair. Iry could understand, from that, why so many kept their robes. They did look better clothed, even with cheeks scarlet and beards wet with sweat.
The procession advanced slowly to the beating of the drum. A semblance of silence had fallen. Surely these Retenu knew the custom; and just as surely they were inured to the sight of naked maidservants. Still, she supposed it remained a novelty. Their women did not dine with them, nor walk about save in robes and veils.
Such a hideous life those women must lead. Iry was glad of her bare skin in the heavy heat of the hall, glad too of the garlands that sweetened her nostrils with fragrance. The men at the tables were a blur of bearded faces, heavy brows, eyes glittering out of the shadows. There was one in the lord’s place, in the high seat, a black-bearded man like any other. But when she met his eyes, she almost laughed. Golden eyes. Falcon-eyes.
Oh, of course. Of course that had been the new lord, invading the women’s quarters, looking on those too of all his possessions. Who else could it have been?
He would not recognize her. She had been lying abed, rumpled and snappish; not walking with all the pride she could summon, bearing a pitcher of the best wine.
And yet as he met her glance, she saw again that sunlit laughter, and—yes—the spark of recognition. She flattened her own stare against it.
He was no more dismayed by her intransigence now than he had been then. She had not her mother’s gift of reducing men to stumbling incoherence. They only laughed at her.
She bowed to him as if to a king—low to the point of insolence. He saw that, too. Retenu were not supposed to see such things. With set teeth and tight-drawn lips, she filled his cup with wine.
He lifted the cup, saluting the hall—but with a tilt that turned the salute on her. His people cheered and hammered on the tables, and drained their own cups of wine.
He did not even sip. “Taste it,” he said with a slant of the eye at Iry.
“What, are you afraid of poison?”
“Should I be?”
“No,” said Iry. She plucked the cup from his fingers and drank a hearty swallow. It was wonderful wine, the best indeed, sweet and dizzyingly potent. It made her reel a little as she set the cup back in his hand, so that her fingers brushed his: a brief touch, with a spark in it, a crackle that made her recoil.
He caught the cup before it fell. “I asked your name,” he said.
“I know yours,” said Iry.
“You could hardly avoid that, could you?”
“And why would you care what my name is? You must have a hundred slavegirls, here and elsewhere.”
“But only one casts a full cup at my feet, and follows it with the sharp edge of her tongue.” He was grinning at her, a white glint in the shadows of his beard.
She bared her teeth in return. “So what will you do? Have me impaled on a spike?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “You’re much too entertaining. Come to my rooms tonight.”
“No,” she said.
Ah; at last. She had taken him aback. “No?”
“No,” she said—and with beating heart, too, but there was no unsaying it. She did not want to go to him after the feast was over. No matter how quick his wit, or how wicked his smile.
He could force her. He was lord and conqueror. She knew that. He knew it, too: she watched him thin
k of it. But he said, “Someday you’ll summon me to your bed.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
He only smiled.
IV
The Lord Khayan took another of the maids to his bed that night, one he chose at random, Iry rather thought. A man must have a woman in his bed, after all. She doubted that he was greatly grieved that that woman was not Iry. She had piqued his fancy, for a moment. Then he had forgotten her.
That was perfectly to her liking. She left the hall once her pitcher was empty, and went to her bed in a cubicle not far from the kitchen.
That was not exactly a slave’s place, but no one had yet contested it, nor did anyone dare to try. The room was tiny but it was hers, and she had it to herself. It was her refuge, the one place where no one pursued her. She kept her few belongings there, her eyepaints and brushes, her wooden comb, a little box of odds and ends and bits of treasure, all in a larger box that stood beside the plain wooden bed with its lashings of worn leather.
Tonight the sheets were clean, and the lamp newly filled with oil and burning with a clear yellow light. Nefer-Ptah, who had been her nurse when she was small, was sitting in the lamplight like an image carved of black stone. She had the gift of sleeping upright, which served a slave well, and which Iry had never been able to acquire.
She also had the gift of waking instantly when the one she waited for set foot on the threshold. Iry stopped there, frowning; not angry yet, but prepared to be. “What are you doing here?”
“Child,” said Nefer-Ptah, “that’s no way to thank me.”
“What, for this?” Iry demanded, taking in the sheets and the lamp with a sweep of the hand. “For that I do thank you. But why?”
“Because I wanted to,” said Nefer-Ptah. “And because someone should remember what day it is for you.”
Iry’s eyes pricked with tears. She was tired, she told herself, and all her aches were coming back. That was all it was.
“I’m glad it happened as it did,” she said with an edge of sharpness. “I was going mad with all the fuss. I’d much rather people fussed over him than over me.”
“Would you really?” Nefer-Ptah did not sound dubious, merely interested. “He is pretty, isn’t he?”
“He looks like all the rest of them. All hair and vaunting arrogance.”
“He’s young,” Nefer-Ptah said. “Much younger than you would expect. He’s not the eldest son by a fair lot of years. It must have been scandalous when he came back from the east, and his father named him the heir over all the elder sons who had stayed near him.”
“That’s probably why he did it.” Iry stepped around Nefer-Ptah and dropped to the bed. “Do you mind terribly? I’m tired.”
“So you are,” said Nefer-Ptah. “Here, roll over.”
Iry glowered, but did as she bade. In a moment the strong deft hands were kneading and stroking the tightness out of her shoulders and the ache out of her back. She sighed and wriggled and gave herself up to it.
~~~
She woke much improved, though in dire need of the twist of wool that waited on the chest beside the bed. She stretched and yawned hugely and sighed. This being a woman was a nuisance, she could already see.
It was the fate the gods had given her. She sighed and suffered it, in a house that had come alive again, humming with the presence of a foreign lord and all his following.
His women came that day, having taken time to settle his affairs behind him—that, Iry learned later. On that day she only knew that there was a new hubbub at the gate, more horses, more chariots, armed guards, and creaking, trundling wagons with canopies both plain and embroidered. In the wagons behind the teams of oxen rode the conqueror’s women: robed, veiled, hidden from any eyes that might see.
It came to her only slowly that not all the guards were bearded, and not all of those were fresh-faced boys. Fresh faces, yes, but soft and sweetly rounded, and under the leather tunics the faint but unmistakable curve of breasts. These were women, one or two riding on horses, the rest in chariots drawn by horses, with swords and spears and bows, and an air of fine and high insouciance.
They were not such women as Iry had ever seen before. Some were dark, but some were fairer of skin under the darkening of wind and weather. One had hair the color of her horse’s coat, like old bronze. Another’s eyes were familiar: paler than eyes should be, almost gold. She had a nose like the arc of the young moon, and a way of turning the head that reminded Iry all too vividly of the Lord Khayan.
His sister, Iry would wager, or his very close kin. She had not her brother’s warmth. She was as hard and keen and cold as a swordblade, sweeping past Iry in the shadow of the gate and springing from the back of her tall dun horse. Even before her feet touched the ground, she was calling out orders in the conquerors’ tongue, in a tone that expected all nearby to leap up in obedience.
Iry chose to be invisible. Lords and servants were one thing; they need trouble her only as far as she chose to let them. Women who strode about like men—that was another thing altogether.
They would want the women’s house. And the Lady Nefertem had not surrendered that to any woman whom the old lord brought with him. He had learned to leave the rest of his women behind when he came here. This new lord had had no such teaching.
Iry considered each of several things that she might do. After a while, as the invasion sorted itself out and the parts of it began to disperse, she set off toward the women’s house.
She was just ahead of the Retenu, but she made no move to walk more quickly. She found the women’s house in its morning order. Maids were cleaning the central hall, sweeping and scrubbing. Others were out in the courtyard with the vats of water from the river, washing linens and running up the stair to the roof, there to spread them to dry.
The Lady Nefertem was awake and completing her morning toilet. She did not acknowledge Iry’s arrival: she was greatly preoccupied with choosing between two grades of malachite for her eyes. “The darker, I think,” she said to her maid, “though the lighter may be more appropriate in this season. Or perhaps . . . the lapis? For variety?”
Iry made herself comfortable in a corner. She had always taken a peculiar pleasure in watching her mother make herself beautiful. The raw beginning, the face all cleansed of paint and upheld to the light of day, was as exquisite and yet as unfinished as a sculptor’s sketch in clay. Then layer by layer the maids painted and adorned it. First the cheeks and brow, smoothed to the whiteness of alabaster; then the blush of the high cheekbones, and the lips drawn full and red, and the eyes made long and brilliant with kohl and, after a last discussion, the darker malachite. Then when all that was done, the selection of the wig. That too was a matter of great moment, a high affair of state. The plaits, the curls, the straight glossy wig like a helmet—even the Nubian wig with its cap of tight curls, which was not in fashion, but the Lady Nefertem might be inclined to make it so.
She shook her head at length and laid that aside, and chose the wig of many plaits, with its fillet of blue beads and gold bound with golden flowers. It was a more formal wig than she used to prefer in the mornings; but Iry knew better than to think that her mother was altogether oblivious to the doings in the house without. Her gown was one of her best, too, of fine white linen cut so close to her body that it had to be sewn on, and when she would be free of it, her maids would cut the stitches.
It concealed nothing of her beauty; not her lovely round breasts with their rosy nipples, nor the gentle curve of her belly, nor the black triangle of her sex. Concealment was no part of it. She was better than naked; she was beauty heightened, and made more wonderful for the thin sheen of gauze between it and the world.
Iry sighed a little. Beauty was not her gift or her art. She had no patience for it. But her mother was a great master. She had a gods-given talent, too, for the exact moment; so that she was ready, dressed, wigged, painted, and set in her regal chair in the room of the waterfowl, when the foreign women entered the women’s house.
They came in like an invading army, which was no more or less than what they were. She of the yellow eyes led them, and the rest of those in tunics, who had ridden on horses and in chariots; then the chattering flock of those in veils. And last of all, as if the others had been the vanguard, a circle of veiled women, and one in their midst who walked slowly, as a queen will, or a woman of years and august presence.
They could not all fit into that one small chamber. The bold ones in the lead scattered to rooms beyond, and most of those in veils, too. But the rider with the falcon-eyes, and the circle of veiled women, did not retreat. Nor did she of the veil and the high head, who must have looked to claim such a chair as the Lady Nefertem sat in, but found herself with nowhere to sit but on the floor.
She stood therefore, and from the glitter of eyes within the veils, she did it with no good grace. She spoke in the language of the Retenu, high words and haughty. “Who are you? How dare you sit in this house as if it were your own?”
Iry could have told her that the Lady Nefertem spoke only Egyptian, and probably should have. But no one else saw fit to do it, either. The Lady Nefertem sat in silence, ignoring the words that meant nothing to her ears, as she had always done and as she would always do.
The silence went on for a great while. The foreign women glanced at one another, and rustled a little, but their lady’s stillness forbade them to speak. The same held for the Egyptians; they knew better than to utter a sound.
When it was considerably more than evident that the Lady Nefertem was not going to break the silence, the foreign lady snapped, “Someone speak to this creature in words that she can understand.”
Iry thought about it for some little time. No one had stepped forward to speak, and no one seemed inclined to. She did not like the way the Retenu was glaring at her mother. Retenu did not control their tempers well. And when they grew angry, they were given to killing whatever got in their way.
